I’ve been thinking about this blog for the last 6 months.
Not because I didn’t know what to write.

Because starting a blog means being visible.
And visible people become easy targets for judgment.

I’m also changing my personal username here to @elpavlo

In some competitors’ stories - I’m a hacker, a criminal,
and probably a movie villain.

In real life, I’ve been building products for many years.

This channel is not about motivation.
Not about success porn.

It’s about business, pressure, bad decisions, and fixing them.

Big thanks to the people who pushed me to finally start 🫶
Of course, thanks to the OnlyMonster team.

And a very special thank you to a business competitor
who accidentally did a great job motivating me.

No noise.
Just work.

The name of this blog is Not Safe for Business.

Not because it’s funny.
Not because it’s edgy.

But because real business is uncomfortable.

It’s pressure.
It’s risk.
It’s decisions that can ruin your sleep.

If you want safe stories,
polite lessons,
and motivational quotes
— you’re in the wrong place.

This is how real products are built.

Not safe.
Not pretty.
But real.

I started building my first websites more than 20 years ago.
I was 14.

No startup mindset.
No big plans.
Just curiosity, a computer, and very bad internet.

I studied marketing at university.
Building things is one skill.
Understanding how they grow is another.

I made my first million in my twenties.
E-commerce, large communities in social networks, IT outsourcing, early crypto projects and mining, etc

Since then, I’ve built dozens of websites
and software products of different complexity.

Product and marketing shaped how I think and work.

Then life hit, 6 years ago

Everything I had was wiped out.
Business gone.
Control gone.
Certainty gone.

I didn’t fail.
That version of me stopped existing.

I’ll talk about it when the time is right.

Three years ago, I got the idea for OnlyMonster

Not a pitch
Not a startup dream

A business task.

The goal was simple
Build something from zero
No investors
No initial capital
No big team

All investments were under $1,000
Basic servers
Domains
Minimum setup

Back then, all current competitors already existed
Today, most of them are gone
Simply wiped out from the market…

Today I lost $260,000 on a gold drop

I had an experienced trader
At some point he lost control
The balance went to zero

So what

That’s the human factor

There is always a human factor
In trading
In business
In investments

Even with AI and robots around
Mistakes will still happen
Because systems are built by people

Investing is not about being right every time
It’s about surviving mistakes

Perfect strategies don’t exist
Only risk management does

Today I turn 35

And today I clearly realize one thing
Money means nothing by itself

What really matters are people around you
Those you can trust
Those who are not in your life just to get something from you
But simply because they are there
And will show up when it matters

And family
There is nothing more valuable than seeing your loved ones smile
In those moments you understand what all of this is actually for

Grateful for everyone who is part of my life
Moving forward

A few hours ago we crashed a Formula 1 car

Damage is over $300,000 🤯

Speed is addictive

My grandmother used to say
Move fast slowly
Move fast slowly

When you go too fast
You lose focus
And start playing with fate

There was a time when I was managing 14 projects at once
I thought speed was strength

Life slowed me down later

Today at OnlyMonster I prefer not to rush

We have dozens of integrations and collaborations in line
We could push a lot of impressive things very quickly

But focus wins

Doing fewer things better wins

P.S. I wasn’t the one driving
And I’m not allowed to post photos 🤷🏼‍♂️

Last week a military drone hit the apartment next door to one of our designers.
She's based in Ukraine.

She took one day off.
Then came back to work.

The same week, one of our engineers
was stopped on the street in Kyiv
and taken to the front.

He's still there.
We can't get him back.

These are not stories about resilience. This is just Tuesday for my team.

We started three years ago - two people. Today we're 74.
Four dev teams, no juniors,
almost no mids.
No one who needs to be pushed.

I don't motivate people.
I work 12 hours a day, every day.
I answer fast. I show up.
That's it.

When your team works under blackouts,
under rockets, under real fear -
the least you can do
is never let them see you disappear.

They don't need inspiration.
They need to know the person leading them is still standing.

I'm proud of these people
more than anything I've built. 🫶

ChatGPT is becoming a search bar.
Nothing wrong with that.
But it's not where I do real work anymore.

The switch happened accidentally.
I was analyzing my health data -
complex, detailed, a lot of context.
ChatGPT lost the thread by message five.
Forgot what I said in message one.

That's when I tried Claude.

Last month I was rebuilding OnlyMonster's billing system.
Loaded every requirement, every constraint, every edge case.
Asked Claude to write detailed prompts for Figma.

First attempt. 80% done. Correctly.

With ChatGPT that same task
would take five or six tries -
and by attempt six,
it no longer remembers what attempt one was supposed to preserve.
This is the actual difference.
Not speed. Not interface.
Memory. Context. Thinking.

My workflow now:
Perplexity for deep research and facts.
Everything goes into Claude.
Projects with instructions attached.
Almost my entire operation lives there.
90% of our company uses AI daily.
We pay for every tool, no restrictions.
But I personally moved everything to Claude -
and I'm not going back.

Use ChatGPT for quick answers.
Use Claude when it actually matters.